Troubled as children, radicalised in adolescence, Michael Adebolajo and Michael
Adebowale were never far from sight of authorities

They were “polite, nice guys” from strict Christian families. Michael Adebolajo’s passions were “music and football and girls”. Michael Adebowale was a “lovable, quiet boy” who enjoyed cooking Jamie Oliver recipes.

Yet, during their teens, these two east London boys descended into a life of petty street crime and drugs, before converting to Islamic extremism which drove them to commit the brutal murder of Drummer Lee Rigby.

Adebolajo, 29, is the son of Anthony and Ibitoye Adebolajo, Nigerian immigrants who settled in Romford, where Michael and his three siblings were born. During the trial, he told the court how his mother taught him to pray but that a Jehovah’s Witness named only as “Ron” fired his interest in religion.

A former girlfriend, Justine Rigden, 26, who dated Adebolajo in her teens, described him as “just a lovely, polite boy” and “very family oriented”.

Miss Rigden, a hairdresser who claimed to have been shortlisted as the “Face of Essex”, said: “Nobody can believe it. He was just this normal, regular boy.”

One of his best friends at school was Kirk Redpath, who joined the Irish Guards and became a drummer before being killed in Iraq in 2007. Adebolajo would later blame Tony Blair for his death.

Redpath’s younger brother, Grant, recalled how they would sit in the Adebolajo’s garage playing computer games and listening to music. “Back then it was music and football and girls,” he said. “Michael did a lot of MC-ing and was really good at it. I just don’t know what’s happened to him in the last 10 years.”

After leaving school, Adebolajo became involved in gangs, smoking marijuana and dealing drugs. One former classmate said he “changed quite dramatically” and started robbing people at knifepoint.

Kemi Ibrahim-Adeoti, 45, a former neighbour, said: “He got caught up with the wrong people. The people he hung around with there were a bad crowd.”

It was around this time that Adebolajo began showing an interest in Islam.

In an attempt to keep him out of trouble, his parents moved the family from Romford to a smart detached house in Saxilby, near Lincoln, the very heart of middle England. But the move did not succeed in turning Adebolajo away from radical Islam. He moved back to London and studied at Greenwich University.

He converted to Islam in 2003 and was radicalised by Bakri Mohammed, the so-called “Tottenham Ayatollah” who was thrown out of Britain when he was leader of the now-banned extremist group Al-Muhajiroun. Adebolajo was also taken under the wing of Bakri’s lieutenant, Anjem Choudhry.

One former friend said Adebolajo “locked himself in this room with this bloke for a few hours and when he came out he was a Muslim convert.

“He was spouting all kinds of stuff and said he had changed his name.”

Adebolajo began calling himself Mujaahid, meaning warrior, a name he insisted on being called during his trial.

Speaking from Beirut, where he now lives in exile, Bakri said of Adebolajo: “At that time there were a lot of conflicts around the world, and in Iraq and in Afghanistan especially. We talked to him about these and he sympathised with the Muslim people, it seemed. He was a quiet boy who didn’t ask many questions.”

Adebolajo became more extreme and took part in numerous Islamist protests in London. He also fathered six children, one born just four days before Mr Rigby’s murder. In 2006 he was arrested during a violent demonstration outside the Old Bailey, where fellow fanatics were on trial accused of soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred following the publication of a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper.

In 2007 he was filmed by the BBC protesting outside Paddington Green police station after the arrest of another fanatic. He was holding a placard which complained of a “Crusade Against Muslims”.

In 2008 he spent three months in custody after assaulting a police officer. The following year a video showed him ranting on a platform in front of young Muslims outside north London mosque. He told them: “Do not be scared of the filthy kuffar [non-believers]. They are pigs.”

His activities escalated in 2010 when Kenyan authorities seized him, along with a group of other youths, trying to cross the border into Somalia. It is believed that he wanted to join the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab. He appeared in court but was not charged.

The circumstances of his return home remain unclear but Kenyan officials claimed that the British authorities treated the case “very lightly” and did not take his threat seriously enough.

It raises the question as to why Adebolajo was not put under greater surveillance or prosecuted in this country on his return from Africa. It is understood that he was approached by MI5 either to see what intelligence they could glean from him or to see if he would spy on other militants. Relations including his brother Jeremiah have said that they were contacted by MI6.

Jeremiah claimed his brother was mistreated in Kenya and that security services were “putting a lot of pressure” him up to “a few months before” the Woolwich attack. He added: “The events to me were inevitable. There was eventually going to be another attack which mentioned foreign policy as its justification.”

Bob Quick, the former Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner, told the BBC’s Panorama. that Adebolajo would have “constantly featured as someone of interest” after his Kenyan adventure. A street project designed to tackle extremism also raised concerns about him but engagement with him stopped in 2011 when the Government cut funding, according to Panorama

For Adebowale, who was born in Eltham, south-east London and attended Kidbrooke School in Greenwich, the first steps down the road to extremism came at the age of just 10. Before that he was “normal, smiling all the time,” said Luqman Ciise, one of his schoolmates.

A former neighbour said: “He used to talk to me very enthusiastically about cooking and his recipes. He loved Jamie Oliver and had his books. But more recently, he would just put his head down when he saw me. Even if I tried to talk to him he was very dismissive. I thought it was weird.”

Adebowale saw the images of the 9/11 attacks on television and would later tell psychiatrists he had been “brainwashed by society” from an early age.

Known as Toby to friends, he is the son of Juliet Obasuyi, 43, a probation officer, and Adeniyi Adebowale, who works at the Nigerian High Commission in London.

The couple split up after Michael was born and Mrs Obasuyi was left to raise her son. As a teenager, Adebowale was involved in the Woolwich Boys, a notorious London street gang dominated by Muslim youths of Somali origin.

He began suffering from psychosis after seeing a friend, with whom he was selling drugs, stabbed to death. Adebowale was knifed in the shoulder and hand in the attack.

Psychiatrists later identified this as the start of psychological problems for Adebowale, exacerbated by heavy smoking of skunk cannabis. His mother began losing control and while at school he was mentored by Richard Taylor, the father of murdered schoolboy Damilola, but to little effect. Mr Taylor said: “He was a young, lovable boy, quiet. From there I started to know him, meet him, and then suddenly his mum started calling me [saying] that she needs help, that the boy was having problems in school, that he comes home and was crying and saying he was being bullied in school. Suddenly I started hearing that he’s getting involved in issues around gangs and drugs and I was not very happy with that.”

In 2009, the year after the stabbing, Adebowale was sent to a young offender’s institution for possession with intent to supply drugs. When he came out, he began wearing Islamic robes and became more heavily involved in the more extreme versions of the religion, including handing out extremist literature. Mr Taylor believes he was radicalised in detention. “Something must’ve gone wrong in prison,” he told ITV News. “They must’ve indoctrinated him in the wrong way.” Mr Taylor last saw him in March – just two months before the murder – but he was already a fully committed Islamist militant by then.

In 2011, after her son had dropped out of university, Mrs Obasuyi told a neighbour: “Michael is not listening any more. His older sister is a good Christian with a degree but Michael is rebelling as he has no father figure, dropping out of university and handing out leaflets in Woolwich town centre.”

Adebowale became associated with al-Muhajiroun and was seen by police taking part in a protest outside the US embassy in September 2012.

In the weeks before the trial, Adebowale, 22, was described as “paranoid and incoherent” and special hearings were held to decide whether he was fit to take part.